Blog marketing is a powerful way to promote your business and more importantly it is a great way to brand yourself. If you are reading this article it’s because you know this and looking for simple ways to increase traffic to your blog.

Here are 7 Effortless Ways To Increase Blog Traffic:

1. Blog Carnivals – a blog carnival is simply a post that contains entries from other blogs. Links from other sites that have similar content is a great way to bring in visitors, so submitting a content rich article with no sales pitches or affiliate links from your blog is a great way to get traffic.

I submit my posts to multiple carnivals at BlogCarnival.com. No payment is required and it is user-friendly. Also, it doesn’t matter whether you have a free or self-hosted blog. If it is a an entry containing quality content it should be accepted. Get into the habit of doing this once a week.

2. Bookmarking/Sharing – bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, search and manage websites they have bookmarked. Sharing these bookmarks with other people gives you exposure because others will share their bookmarks containing your content.

I use bookmarking and sharing sites such as del.icio.us, Digg, and Stumbleupon. There are many more and it is important you also provide links to these sites from your blog to make it easier for your readers to share your link to others. Get into the habit of sharing great content by others and some of those people will return the favor.

3. Don’t Be Shy – I know this is obvious but there is nothing better than word of mouth. Just be tactful about it. Let your colleagues, family and friends know about your blog. Ask them to do you the favor to let others know about it too.

Add the URL to your blog on business cards, flyers, and anything else you can think of. Please keep in mind your goal should be to receive targeted traffic so be upfront about the content. Not everyone is going to have an interest in what you are writing about so letting them know ahead of time will streamline your visitors into quality traffic.

4. Plug-Ins – depending on the blogging platform you are using plug-ins may be accessible and there are some which were created to help with traffic generation. You still have to make sure there is quality content and plenty of it but these plug-ins give you advantages that would take you a very long time to do on your own.

I self-host my blog using Worpdress and the availability of plug-ins are endless. Some of the free systems may offer some enhancements as well, but whichever you use just make sure they are coming from a credible source because some of these plug-ins could do more harm than good.

5. RSS Feeds – an RSS (real simple syndication) is used to publish frequently updated content, such as blog entries and other announcements. You should encourage people to subscribe to your RSS feed.

When people have access to your feed this gives them instant access to your latest entries and it gives you a great avenue to bring in consistent and returning traffic. To maintain that flow of traffic continue to provide quality content.

6. Social Networking – if you use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or any of the hundreds of social networking sites offered today you must have realized how powerful these sites can be to your exposure. These platforms offer areas to add information about you, your business and interests.

Having access to such powerful sites gives you an edge many never had before and although they have had success in the past without them, I’m sure if they had access to these social networking sites back then it would have minimized their efforts and maximized their success much sooner.

7. Viral Marketing – these days it’s so easy to create your own audios, videos, podcasts, e-books and mini reports. What does this have to do with your blog marketing? Well, how about using one of these marketing platforms to promote your blog?

The key to viral marketing is getting people to pass your content along to others and have them pass it along to others, etc. Just imagine that happening multiple times over. You can use platforms available to submit audios, videos, etc., so others can pass your content to others freely without spending any money, if at all.